


my kingdom for a kiss upon the shoulder

by sidnihoudini



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Breaking Up & Making Up, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-03 20:08:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2885954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidnihoudini/pseuds/sidnihoudini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Chris, that’s enough,” She sighs, picking dried icing out of the carpet.  “We’ll all watch Zach’s performance on TV.  I can send some ham home with you.”</p><p>For some reason, that really gets to him.  He doesn’t know when it happened, but all of a sudden he’s so agitated he’s teary-eyed.  He crosses his arms over his chest, digs himself a little further back in the armchair, and wonders what the chances are of speeding Christmas up on sheer will alone so he can go back to stewing about this whole thing in the comfort of his own home.</p><p>Fucking Christmas ham, he thinks, trying to calm the lump in his throat.  A Christmas ham is not going to fix his problems this year; not when they start and end with Zach being such a fucking asshole.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my kingdom for a kiss upon the shoulder

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rabidchild (rabidchild67)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidchild67/gifts).



> **Update Jan 3, 2014:** I finished it! A few days late, but here nonetheless. As always, comments and feedback are much appreciated  <3.
> 
> * * *
> 
> So... this turned into 10k of Christmas fic. I haven't had enough time to properly edit this over the holidays, so I am just posting the first part (which lines up with one of RC's three prompts!) until I get the rest finished later this weekend.
> 
> Happy holidays, RC, I hope you like this, and I hope you will also like the rest of the actual story when I post that, too!

In California, Chris drops a few cubes of ice into his drink.

Tis the season for milk and Baileys, though not necessarily in that order. It’s December 22nd today, which means that Chris can be moderately confident he hasn’t had a beverage without some kind of booze in it for approximately one month and twenty two days - twenty three if you counted the hellfire of Halloween night. Chris is pretty sure that he woke up on November 1st with more tequila pumping through his system than blood.

Now, he swishes the ice around in his festively colored glass, and lets the cubes clink around inside as he studies the interior of his mother’s kitchen. She has clearly made a conscious decision to go hard on the poinsettias this year, as evidenced by the fact that the entire kitchen is covered in them. There are dozens of them, pots organized in little groups around her every day cactus arrangements. It’s strange that the house smells like cinnamon and cloves, but maintains the illusion of being a cheesy tourist cantina. All they need are a few empty Jose and Corona bottles lined up in the windows.

Considering this, Chris sips his drink again, and leans back against the counter. 

He put milk in with his Baileys so he didn’t have to feel so bad about drinking at three o’clock in the afternoon, but honestly he should have just gone booze only, because now it hardly feels like he’s drinking at all. He’s a 34 year old professional who has managed to make himself feel as though he’s just a small child nursing a glass of milk in his mother’s kitchen on a Tuesday afternoon.

It doesn’t exactly help that he can hear his sister watching childrens Christmas specials in the other room. Like, honestly, for a therapist in training, she has a serious affection for reliving her youth whenever the opportunity presents itself. Chris frowns, thinking about it - her teenaged years were much kinder to her than his were to him - and studies a crack in the plaster growing in the wall opposite him.

He’s knows he’s probably racking up the bad mental karma for being such a brat. Truthfully, there is absolutely nothing wrong with his mother’s kitchen, her taste in seasonal plants, or Katie’s ongoing affinity for the Muppets franchise.

It’s just - Christmas came faster than normal, this year. It feels like it snuck up on him.

One minute it was 2013, and then it was summer, and now here he is in December. This time last year he and Zach were skiing, celebrating New Years Eve with friends in Colorado, and now here he is, a year later and celebrating two recent successful ad campaigns with his sister for company and his parents down the street at a neighbor’s cookie party. Like, fuck. If there was such a thing as “quintessential white suburbia during the holidays,” Chris is pretty sure that “cookie party” about sums it up.

He frowns again and reaches for his iPhone, which he’d set down beside the Costco sized bottle of Baileys earlier. The back of his still caseless phone is covered in a light, sticky layer of condensation from the bottom of the glass liquor bottle.

Aaaaaaand now he’s totally thinking about Colorado. Sticky, sweaty Colorado where he and Zach had fucked their way through every room in the exclusive chalet Zach had rented for the two of them as a late Christmas present. Chris curls his fingers against the countertop, feeling his knuckles slide against the smooth granite surface. He will not get a boner in his parents kitchen. Not while he simultaneously feels so sad.

Being alone on Christmas is totally shitty. He’s like - it’s fine, he’s alright, he understands Zach’s opinion and even appreciates it - but, fuck, if he has to hear U2’s version of Baby, Please Come Home one more time, he’s going to start throwing ornaments against the ground just to hear them break.

Alright, MTV True Life: Chris has been listening to the Mariah Carey Christmas album since the first day of November. While November 1st does now live as a vomit soaked, hungover haze in the back of his mind, he still remembers the clear moments that had cut through the nausea. At the time he had laid in bed beside Zach, who was also sporting a pickled liver, and daydreamed what was ultimately a heavily romanticized idea of the upcoming two months of November and December: the quiet snowfalls, the horse drawn carriage rides through New York, piles of hand quilted blankets, plaid everything, gingerbread anything, and laying face up underneath the Christmas tree.

He had celebrated his seventh anniversary with Zach a few months before Halloween had even rolled around.

Their official “In a Relationship” anniversary had been in late August, but their “we met for the first time and fucked the same night” anniversary was a few weeks earlier: June 7th, if you wanted to get technical about it. They’d met the night of Zach’s dirty 30th at a karaoke bar in Silverlake - back then Chris had just been a babyfaced twenty six year old in comparison, halfway through business school - and it had been tru wuv from the moment he’d opened his mouth to let the Sean Paul lyrics out.

Zach had taken his picture that night, as Chris had braced himself against the exterior brick wall with one hand to puke jug after jug of cheap house beer back up onto the sidewalk. And then Zach had let him stick around for seven years after that, meaning that this year wouldn’t have been their first holiday season together by a long shot. Even though it wouldn’t have been their first, or second, or fifth Christmas together, Chris still liked to daydream.

And then Zach had gone and fucked everything up by asking Chris if they could go on a break, “just for a little while.” I’ll be in New York for work anyways, Zach had said, looking anywhere but at Chris’ face.

So, now, in his mother’s kitchen, Chris frowns again. He frowns, and then stares a little harder at the poinsettia still directly in his line of vision.

Fuck, he thinks, as he grimaces and throws the rest of his drink back. Baileys doesn’t give him that same self satisfied feeling that brooding with a glass of jack does, but he reaches for the bottle again, anyways.

This time he’s gonna drink the Baileys straight. Fuck milk.

~

In New York, Zach slips and slides against the ice covered sidewalk.

He’s been listening to Ariana Grande on shuffle since he got off the train on 14th Street. A little voice somewhere in the very back of his head is telling him that it’s something he should feel bad about, but he can’t really bring himself to care.

As Zach cuts through the crowded sidewalks, he keeps a rolling ticker tape of the people surrounding him, instead: this one smells, that one has nice pants, woah, wait, was that Jake Gyllenhaall?

Shaking his head, Zach tries to zone out as he makes his way in the general direction of Barney’s. This afternoon, Zach has an end plan: a goal.

It’s kind of his dirty little secret. Despite all other aspects of his classically type a personality, Zach still very much subscribes to last minute Christmas shopping. As he approaches his late thirties, Christmas shopping is the only part of his life that remains largely unplanned and a little off the hinge: he doesn’t do lists, he doesn’t buy anything online, and he gets everything gift wrapped at the counter. It used to drive Chris absolutely nuts.

This year he’s chosen Barney’s as his arena, mostly because the well known department store has never failed to utterly impress his mother. Last year she even put the gift receipt he’d included with her sweater up on the refrigerator until the carbon copy faded.

Zach presses the palm of his hand against the glass revolving door, and feels the swell of temperature controlled warmth pour out from inside as he pushes forward.

Truthfully, he wants to get this over and done with as soon as possible. He has exactly three people on his list this year: his mother, Joe, and - even though they’re technically going to be on a break over the holidays - Zach just wouldn’t feel right without buying Mr. Christmas himself something to quantify their love. This time of year is just something that Zach has never been able to swallow, not since losing his dad. Ever since, he and Joe have been more interested in celebrating Thanksgiving and birthdays; the former touting a smorgasbord of delicious food, and the latter a childhood full of cheeseburgers and chicken nugget parties at McDonalds.

And right between the two: Christmas. The ink blot on Zach’s monthly planner that had historically ended with gift shopping at a convenience store on December 24th on more than one occasion. As he passes by an elaborate display set up in the front lobby of Barney’s, Zach can’t help but side eye the happy looking mannequins, and feel a little bit bad about himself.

Ariana must be getting to him, he figures, slowing his gait as he approaches a table full of mitten and hat sets. Ooh, cashmere.

So anyway, gift shopping aside, the thing he dislikes most about the holiday season is the looming feeling of togetherness. You aren’t anyone if someone doesn’t love you on Christmas, and especially this year - with Chris on the opposite side of the country - absolutely everything has been making Zach feel as though he needs to be part of a couple to belong. It’s a season manufactured and marketed towards lovers, and honestly, Zach just isn’t in a place where he feels comfortable enough with his life to deal with that right now.

He already has enough awkward, stilted text conversations with Chris on the reg to prove it.

Even Joe - a betrayer made of Zach’s own flesh and blood - has been not so subtly hinting at the fact that Zach done fucked up big time when he’d asked Chris to give him some space until the New Year rolled around. At first Zach had been kind of pissed off at Joe’s implication that Zach had lost his mind, but honestly, now that a few weeks have passed and Christmas Day is quickly approaching, Zach is beginning to realize that he did make a mistake. Asking Chris for space seven years into their very mutual, very loving relationship had been Zach’s stupid knee jerk reaction to the parade of engagement commercials and Facebook announcements that had started trickling in after Halloween.

Like, for fucks sake. He knows that Chris isn’t exactly a lady in waiting at this point, but after more years spent together than Zach can successfully count on one hand, he had really been starting to feel the mounting pressure. Even Nonna Quinto had given them both shit whenever she saw them together at family events. She had worked on her game over the years, too. It generally involved cornering Zach and blocking him in with her electric wheelchair so she could ask, “So, when are yinz gowen to git married?”

Ultimately Chris was always the one who would swoop in, paper plate buckling in the middle after he’d spent twenty minutes loading it with pickles, cheese, and crackers, and would lead the conversation back in the opposite direction. He’d usually roll Nonna away with one hand, leaving Zach to stand there alone, red faced and sweaty.

Zach picks up a white mitten and scarf set. His mom would probably genuinely like this, he thinks, weighing it in one hand.

As he passes by the jewelry department, he pointedly tries to ignore the lineups of grown men that are swarming the mirrored counters. They all have their heads bowed down over the glass, googly eyed as they point their fingers to tap at the baubles encased beneath. Zach also makes a point to ignore the red and white ‘This holiday, bedazzle HER!’ ad campaign spread over every surface. The department is absolutely dripping with it, a swamp made of hanging cardstock and plastic banners.

Mostly, it all just reminds him of Chris - he remembers seeing the original proofs for these ads in Chris’ office back in July.

It’s also a sharp reminder that ultimately, Chris is just an ad guy, doing his job. Chris wrote these engagement ads in-between getting fucked in the shower and doing the laundry: he was obviously in on the whole thing being marketing bullshit. Yet, even now, Zach still remembers feeling himself itch anytime anyone had even referenced marriage in their combined presence. He remembers feeling his fingers curl and then uncurl, like they should have been around a velvet jewelry box instead of open, empty air.

Maybe the scariest thing about it all is that he honestly doesn’t even know whether or not Chris is interested in marriage at all - or if Chris would even have him. Because instead of asking like some kind of grown up or adult human being, Zach had panicked, blurted out his request for more space, and immediately high tailed it back to New York like a gigantic fucking baby.

Zach frowns, and glances back over his shoulder at the jewelry department. Now aisles of scarves and winter wear separate him from his greatest fear.

Usually, Zach would be ass deep in last minute Christmas presents and tour preparations. But right now, he just can’t stop thinking about Chris.

Fuck, did he ever one-handedly dick everything up.

~

“I thought Zach said he would be able to get a few weeks off for the holidays this year,” Gwynne says, setting a platter of cookies down on the coffee table. Even though her words sound like they’re on their way to forming a question, when they come out of her mouth, it ultimately sounds like more of a statement than anything else. “I emailed him a few weeks ago to ask if he still wanted ham for Christmas dinner.”

Chris settles back into the couch cushions, frowning a little bit as he studies his mother’s cookie tray. Zach hadn’t told him his mom had emailed.

Also, considering this tray of cookies is the combined work of about seven different women, none of them look significantly different from the others. Nobody even went for a good tart recipe this year, Chris thinks, disappointed. His frown deepens as he lurches forward, reaching one hand out for a reindeer shaped cookie that is decorated in Martha Stewart brand red icing (he can tell by the particular shade of coral - flashback to an ad campaign from three years ago) and silver dragees.

“They weren’t expecting to get booked on Letterman,” Chris shrugs, biting into the cookie. It’s a half truth.

Chris’ white lie seems to satisfy his mother just enough for her to cease her line of questioning. 

His dad, totally checked out, turns the volume up another couple of notches on the TV, which is huge and flat and mounted above their gas fireplace. Chris takes a bite of his cookie and glances up at the plasma screen, to where his father is watching one of those HD “Fireplace In Your Home” videos despite the real thing being directly below it. The crackle and snap noises are beginning to border on violent, thanks to the decibel his father insists on keeping the volume at.

“I saw in US Weekly that he’s dating an upcoming actress from some new show on ABC,” Katie adds, helpful as ever. 

She holds her iPad up, screen at maximum brightness so there’s absolutely no way any of them can miss the photo she’s looking at. Chris feels a little seasick as he focuses in on the paparazzi photo, which is too perfectly framed to be anything other than pre-planned and paid for. It’s Zach and a pretty red headed girl exiting a coffee shop, both of them fit looking and dressed from head to toe in black and leather.

Zach looks really fucking good. Chris loves it when he wears a beanie and his leather jacket.

“Would you shut the fuck up?” Chris snaps, launching one of his mother’s beaded throw pillows across the room a little more violently than he’d actually meant to.

It knocks Katie’s iPad and cookie out of her hands and to the white carpet, right as Gwynne exclaims, “Katie! Chris!”

“Doesn’t it bother you?” Katie taunts, really hooking her elbow as she throws the same pillow back with just as much force. She may be a great psychologist, but she’s unfortunately still Chris’ bitchy big sister. He ducks out of the way as the pillow comes tumbling through the air over the coffee table, and then smacks it to the floor as Katie adds, “He’s always rumored to be involved with some new girl.”

For all intents and purposes, they’re a pretty WASP-y family. And there are certain things that WASP-y families don’t talk about. In their case, Zach’s neverending parade of beards is one of them.

“Alright, enough - Katie,” Gwynne snaps, her voice short and sharp like the sound of bubblegum popping.

As Gwynne moves to pick the throw pillow up off the floor and toss it back onto an empty arm chair, Robert turns the TV fire up a few more notches.

“For the record? It doesn’t bother me,” Chris replies, before he screws his expression up enough to give Katie the best ‘shut the fuck up’ face he can manage on such short notice. She raises her eyebrows in response, then smiles and nods in a _suuuuuure you don’t way._ It makes Chris sigh. He pinches the bridge of his nose and tries to let go of the lingering feeling of being punched in the stomach as he grumbles, “Jesus Christ.”

Gwynne is still on the move between them, now more concerned with picking up Katie’s cookie explosion than anything else.

“Chris, that’s enough,” She sighs, picking dried icing out of the carpet. “We’ll all watch Zach’s performance on TV. I can send some ham home with you.”

For some reason, that really gets to him. He doesn’t know when it happened, but all of a sudden he’s so agitated he’s teary-eyed. He crosses his arms over his chest, digs himself a little further back in the armchair, and wonders what the chances are of speeding Christmas up on sheer will alone so he can go back to stewing about this whole thing in the comfort of his own home.

Fucking Christmas ham, he thinks, trying to calm the lump in his throat. A Christmas ham is not going to fix his problems this year; not when they start and end with Zach being such a fucking asshole.

~

Truthfully, Chris hadn’t realized how difficult it would be to date a musician until he was six months into a relationship with a moderately successful one.

Being romantically involved with someone in the entertainment industry had never seemed that strange to him while he was growing up; it was normal. His grandfather had been a lawyer who had married an actress, who had given birth to another actress who then married an actor. After all of that, Chris and Katie had been the two strange branches of the Pine family tree: the odd ones out, with their business and psychology majors.

And, after growing up and then continuing to live in LA as an adult, the odds had just been stacked in Chris’ favor to end up with an actor, a musician, or - if true love was a real thing after all - a street performer. It had just been a roulette roll, and the dice had landed on Zach.

Zach, who had captured his attention quickly, and had never given it back. Zach, who wrote lyrics that Chris ultimately knew were for him (“sun in the morning / my sun every morning / my star of the evening / my moon always beaming”) but would never be shared with the rest of the world. Zach, who smiled and looked at him differently than anyone else ever had; like he saw the strange creature that lived inside Chris and loved that most of all.

That night, Chris sits with his parents and his sister, and he watches Zach perform on David Letterman with his band. Halfway through their song they throw in a chorus of “Teenage Dream” for no particular reason, and it makes Chris laugh. Zach is absolutely mesmerizing when he sings, and Chris’ fingers itch to touch him one more time.

As Dave throws to commercial, one arm wrapped around Zach’s shoulder and the band’s vinyl held out in front of them, Zach smiles and waves at the camera a little bit, ducking his head low and laughing as one particularly excited fan screams something at him from the audience.

“Well that was nice,” Gwynne says, as his dad changes the channel back over to the HD fireplace feed.

Chris chews his bottom lip, and tries to sort his thoughts out.

“Yeah,” He manages to agree, nodding.

~

After Letterman, Zach rounds up a few people to go for drinks.

The band, a few of their girlfriends, his brother, and Karen - the actress that he assumes the world now knows he had lunch with earlier in the day - all bundle up, and head out into the chilly New York night.

Halfway through their communal walk to the bar, Chris comes up. Because Chris always comes up.

Joe tells Zach that he’s being a total fucking tool, and then suggests putting gift wrap around his dick and heading back to California immediately. While everybody else laughs at the joke, Zach sort of secretly considers it. Ultimately, though, he decides that while that may have worked under normal circumstances, with the whole “let’s take a break” thing hanging over their heads, Chris would likely just get a sweet punch to Zach’s papered cock before telling him to get the fuck off the stoop.

He checks his phone compulsively as the conversation fades into the background. He has no idea what he’s waiting for, because when he asked Chris for space, Chris had given it to him, but it comforts him to check anyways.

The further they walk, the further Zach edges to stepping off the end of the diving board and straight up begging Chris to forget about his stupid request.

Chris is an old fashioned kind of dude. He’s the kind of guy who unabashedly listens to Mariah Carey every year, and isn’t ashamed when Netflix publicly posts the romantic Christmas comedies he’s been watching to his Facebook wall. He is the total flip-side of Zach’s holiday coin; romantic gestures genuinely made Chris happy. And in this case, Zach almost feels like words wouldn’t even be enough to get the depths of his own stupidity across. He needs something bigger, something like…

A declaration. A cheesy, Lifetime romance movie looking, Mariah Carey Christmas album sounding, declaration of love. Zach needs to write cute shit on gigantic pieces of white cardboard and show up in Chris’ parents living room. Zach needs to pick up Chris’ forgotten glove, and cross the country to return it because that’s what true love meant. Zach needs to do more than just apologize for being a gigantic idiot - Zach realizes that he needs to show it.

“Oh my god,” He blurts, stopping short. A bright light bulb flickers to life above his head; jingle bells ring somewhere in the distance.

When Joe turns around to see what the hold up is and notices Zach’s expression, a huge, winding, Grinch style grin creeps its way across his face.

“Yes,” Joe nods, his crazed expression looking freakish in the low street light. “Whatever it is you’re thinking right now, the answer is yes.”

Zach feels his chest go ice cold, and then flush warm, and then he’s laughing.

“Fuck,” He says out loud, staring back at Joe.

When he looks back, he’ll realize that was the moment where he knew he was going to propose to Chris.

~

The next afternoon, Gwynne hosts a Christmas Eve-day luncheon with a number of Pine family friends that Chris only vaguely remembers from the various stages of growing up.

Social events like these have always been the hardest things to balance: how to quantify Zach’s presence in his life, without showing their entire hand of cards. How much could he say about Zach without actually giving Zach’s identity away? Despite being an actively outspoken supporter of the gay community, Zach was only that - a supporter. He had yet to actually come out, as evidenced by the photos Katie had paraded around last night.

Sure, you could Google “zachary quinto + gay” or “zachary quinto + boyfriend” and you’d get some fun results, but nothing official.

Strangely enough, though, Zach actually had a small subset of fans who seemed like they’d figured it all out.

Chris had found them one day after he and Joe had drunkenly searched for various combinations of their names. The fans on this particular blog had drawn red circles around Chris’ distorted background presence in a number of photos of Zach, namely: sitting side stage at one of Zach’s shows while Zach was at the mic, awkwardly standing off to the side with Zach’s publicist at a red carpet event, and, in one particularly memorable fuck up, as the screen of Zach’s phone in a photo the paparazzi had snapped one fateful Sunday morning in Silverlake. Zach had managed to turn his screen in just the right way to show that the background was set to a semi not safe for work photo of Chris.

It was blips in the radar like that where it became obvious that Zach wasn’t totally on the level with his public persona. He just so happened to have enough paparazzi photos that co-starred alternating beautiful women at various times throughout the day that it was still completely plausible he was just your everyday, actress boning rockstar.

That being said, the fans who had figured it out had also taken to tagging the photos that featured Chris as “mr and mrs quinto,” which he still wasn’t totally sure how he felt about.

Either way there was absolutely no foolproof way to confirm that none of the women in his mother’s living room were not the people who were also drawing circles on Chris’ face in the handful of photos he’d been caught in. There was no way to tell whether or not they were past or present fans of Zach, or whether or not they had - at any point - discussed who was currently sitting on Zach’s dick. Maybe one day that would change - maybe one day Chris could say “it’s me, bitches” - but it wasn’t today, especially with the way that things currently sat between the two of them.

So, today, Chris is dating an unnamed person who unfortunately could not be here this afternoon, but totally does exist, so please do not introduce me to your daughter again, Marjorie, thank you.

Throughout the afternoon, Chris checks his text messages regularly, passively waiting on one to come from Zach. To be honest, at this point he isn’t even sure what he’s expecting to hear. Around 3PM, after the seventh time he’s subtly alluded to Zach’s general presence in his life, and the fifth time he’s gone through the watered down, cliffs notes version of how he and Zach had met at karaoke without actually naming names, Chris has officially had enough.

In that moment he totally and utterly folds.

While his mother is still caught up in chatting with Susan from down the street, and Zach has still not been bothered enough to pick up his phone, Chris snags his wallet from the kitchen counter, drive-by kisses his mother on the cheek, and heads out the front door with a little bit of a bounce in his step. He would ask his dad to drive him to LAX, but he spent yesterday drinking an entire gallon of milk, and has also been making a concentrated effort to keep his jerking off to a minimum.

Feeling like a teenager is at an all-time high right now, and honestly, Chris just can’t let himself fall down that rabbit hole any further.

~

_one christmas themed montage later, and…_

~

When Zach’s plane hits tarmac at LAX, the sun is beginning to set.

The taxi driver sort of recognizes him - he tells Zach he looks familiar, and they eventually come to the mutual agreement that he must have seen Zach and his band perform on Letterman the night before. They get into a short discussion about music, which somehow ends in the driver telling Zach that he’s been up for 36 hours thanks to some kind of energy drink that the FDA is trying to get off the shelves. Luckily, the driver says, his cousin owns a small chain of independently run convenience stores, so he can still order it directly from the manufacturer.

Despite a few near misses with oncoming traffic, all that Zach can do is smile and nod. He’s a performer by nature, but he has no idea what he’s going to say when he sees Chris.

He directs the cab driver to Chris’ parents house, tips well, and then trips over the sidewalk as he makes his way up towards the front door. As usual, Robert has done a lovely job in decorating the exterior. It’s basically the Christmas light equivalent to a turducken: lights looped around lights looped around lights, and then a few more lights just to make sure there are enough lights. When Zach gets to the front door, the huge wreath hung on it makes him feel a little dizzy.

“Jesus. Okay,” Zach whispers to himself, straightening his shoulders. His heart feels like it’s about to beat out of his chest. He can totally do this. Fuck he hasn’t been this nervous since the time he auditioned for American Idol. In retrospect, that was a bad idea. This is hopefully not. He exhales a short, sharp breath to empty the nervous energy from his chest, and raises his hand to knock. 

Hold it together, he thinks to himself, as he stands there in the bright glow of the Christmas lights.

Inside the house there are foot steps. And they sound suspiciously fancy, like high heels instead of the matching Crocs Chris’ parents usually wore. Zach immediately feels underdressed, and glances down at his own clothing as the door creaks open. When he glances back up from his jeans, sneakers and jacket, Gwynne is staring back at him like she had been expecting somebody else.

“Zach?” She shout-asks, her expression completely changing as she takes in Zach standing in front of her. As the door swings open another few inches, Zach quickly realizes that they’re having some kind of rich old person gathering. There is the gentle chatter of manicured conversation, and the tinker of stemware and silver cutlery. “Oh, you surprised me! What are you doing here?”

Shit. Zach doesn’t know whether he should smile at her, or look shocked too; his face wavers in some kind of muscle confusion between the two emotions.

“Surprise,” He manages, not knowing what else to say. It falls a little flat; Gwynne’s mouth drops a little further open. “I’m here to surprise Chris.”

Gwynne brings one hand up to her mouth as Robert comes up behind her, eating a shortbread and looking surprised as hell. He extends a hand for Zach to shake, and then adds, dry crumbs all over his bottom lip, “Chris left for the airport a few hours ago. Didn’t he tell you he was coming to New York?”

“Oh my god,” Zach intones, his mouth dropping open as he stares between Chris’ parents. From somewhere inside the depth of their tan and California turquoise living room, someone asks who it is at the door. At that Gwynne turns around and takes off, her explanation for Zach’s sudden appearance fading into background noise as he and Robert boggle at one another. He finally manages to ask, “When did he leave?”

Licking his lips, Robert brings his wrist up and twists his hand quickly, until his wrist watch slides back around so the face is easy to read. Some crazy part of Zach’s brain identifies it as something that Chris does, too. One time Chris wasn’t even wearing a wristwatch, and he did it when Zach asked what the time was.

“About three hours, now,” Robert answers, stepping to the side. He extends one arm out to the foyer, and says, “You’re welcome to come in and have a coffee. Gwynne’s got some cookies, too.”

Pulsing a smile, Zach nods, steps over the stoop, and reaches for his cellphone.

~

Chris is knocking aimlessly when his phone rings.

“Perfect,” He sighs, realizing it’s Zach. Despite the situation, he still laughs a little at the contact photo he’d assigned Zach. He’d taken the picture when they were in Urban Outfitters a few month ago, because Urban Outfitters always has been and always would be Chris’ dirtiest little secret. In the slightly blurry photo, Zach is holding two hipster cupcake mustache decorations up to his nipples like burlesque tassels. After looking at the photo for a moment, Chris finally swipes to answer.

He doesn’t realize it’s a Facetime call until Zach’s real time face pops up on the screen. This one doesn’t look as unimpressed as Urban Outfitters titty tassel Zach, but he doesn’t exactly look happy, either.

“Hey,” Chris greets, trying to angle the phone so it doesn’t pick up his secret double chin.

Zach boggles at him for a few minutes, clearly at a loss for words, until he finally gets it together and blurts, “Where the fuck are you?”

To Zach’s credit, he only sounds a little bit hysterical.

“I, well…” Chris starts to say, but ultimately ends up trailing off and then pausing. After a second of silence he can feel himself starting to blush, so he rubs his face with one hand and lets the phone’s camera pan to the side. More specifically, to Zach’s apartment door that he is currently standing in front of, without Zach.

Chris can tell exactly when Zach recognizes the paint color, and the door number, because hysterical laughter begins to bubble through the phone. When Chris brings the camera back up to face level, he can see that they’re both a little teary-eyed as they stare at one another wordlessly. Chris also registers the background behind Zach for the first time, and blurts, “Are you at my mother’s house?”

“Yes,” Zach laughs, bringing one hand up to wipe at his eye with his palm. He holds the phone up over his shoulder, so Chris can get an unrestricted view of Zach’s current surroundings - and, sure enough, he’s in his parents recently renovated kitchen. There are California vineyard wine bottles on the counter, and Katie flips him off from where she’s sitting silently at the kitchen table in the background, still reading something on her iPad. It almost feels like he’s still at home. The camera switches back to Zach after a second. “I wanted to surprise you for Christmas… and apologize for being so stupid about everything.”

Licking his lips, Chris nods, sighs, and looks back at Zach’s apartment door. He replies, “I wanted to surprise you, too. I even convinced your scary neighbor to let me in the front door without a key.”

Zach laughs and then groans, pinching the bridge of his nose. After a moment he looks back at the camera, his eyes suspiciously bright.

“Well, it’s not Christmas yet,” Zach tells him, mouth beginning to curl up into a little smile as he adds, “Stay there. I’m coming.”

That makes Chris grin for real. He laughs, too, a little delirious from the amount of dopamine suddenly coursing through his brain.

“Alright,” He replies, feeling a little speechless as Zach ends the call. As the screen slides back over to his recent contacts list, Chris looks down the empty hallway, and adds to nobody in particular, “I’ll be here.”

~

Zach has never been so grateful to fly standby in his life.

A few hours later he’s back in the big city, skyscrapers covered with snow and twinkling lights. The cab ride to his place in Brooklyn feels about forty minutes too long. The streets are completely gridlocked with late Christmas Eve traffic, and at one point, Zach thinks about getting out and running over the bridge just to be free of the backseat. 

He bounces his foot against the floor as they finally start to move again. The whole cab shakes as they wait at another red light a block later, streams and streams of New Yorkers dressed in winter wear crossing the street in front of them.

Wildly, Zach thinks about his Christmas shopping, and how the majority of it is still sitting on his kitchen table, unwrapped.

An hour later, they pull up in front of Zach’s studio apartment building. With his career and Chris he found himself in California more and more, but this had been the first thing he’d purchased with his label money, and still held a special place in his heart even though his feet rarely made an appearance. 

He throws a wad of cash at the driver from the backseat, and falls on ice on his way out. Zach has to grab onto the cab door to save himself, and gets a glimpse at the cab driver sorting his cash face up through the window as his feet slide against the sidewalk again, and his legs go in two different directions like a Disney cartoon character. 

Once Zach finally gets himself upright, he slams the cab door closed behind him, and moves as quickly as he can across the sidewalk and up the front brick steps of his building. 

Inside his apartment building, it’s almost too warm to stand. Zach can practically taste the wallpaper paint and dusty carpet as he bounces up the two flights of stairs, one hand self-consciously sliding down to cover the outside of his pant pocket.

When he gets to his floor and sees Chris, his emotions misfire and he starts to laugh.

Chris is leaning back against the door with his mouth wide open, fast asleep. Zach glances down at his watch - he’s been running on adrenaline and coffee since he first got the idea to leave for the sunny state this morning - and realizes how late it is. Almost 1:30 in the morning, on Christmas Day proper. He’d forgotten he’d lose a few hours flying west to east, too, which means he didn’t make it before Christmas.

That doesn’t matter, all of a sudden. Zach feels his heart push against the inside of his chest, and lead him towards Chris like a dowsing rod.

“Hi,” Zach whispers, as he kneels down at Chris’ side and touches his shoulder gently, trying not to startle him out of sleep. Chris’ eyes flicker open, a flood of blue warming Zach’s soul, before he startles and jumps at the unfamiliar surroundings, bumping his head back against the door. “Shit, sorry. I can’t believe you sat on the floor and waited for me.”

Chris is blinking himself more awake, now, looking a little more alert as he shakes his head and holds his arms out for Zach to move into.

“I reject your ‘let’s go on a break’ proposal,” He grumbles, voice rough and tired. Zach laughs a little, squeezing his eyes shut as he leans further into Chris, losing his balance a little as they hug on the floor. Chris pulls back, and looks up at Zach’s amused face. “I thought about it for a while, and my decision is ‘fuck no.’”

Rolling his lips in-between his teeth, Zach tries to hide his smile as he lets go of Chris, and sits back on his heels. Chris frowns and looks confused, for a moment, until he realizes that Zach is leaning back far enough so he can work a hand into the front pocket of his jeans.

“So I forgot to take this out of my pocket at both airports, both times,” Zach starts to say, raising one eyebrow as he tugs a little paper envelope out of his pocket, and holds it up for Chris to see. “I set off so many alarms today I’m pretty sure I must have been flagged in some system somewhere.”

Chris watched a lot of America’s Funniest Home videos as a kid. He’s seen the proposal montages. He’s seen that shit a million times, and never knew how those women knew what was coming until right now, in this moment, on the floor outside of Zach’s apartment. His heart rate doubles, and then triples, and then he feels his mouth dry out. He feels like he’s talking underwater as he asks, “What are you doing?”

“What I should have done instead of getting cold feet,” Zach explains, tipping the little paper envelope over, until its contents slide out, and onto the palm of his hand. Chris fights against the urge to throw up when he realizes what it is: a ring, simple, rose gold, nothing else. Zach’s other hand is shaking as he picks the ring out of his own palm, and says, “I want warm feet. I never want to wear socks again.”

For a second, Chris can’t move. Zach holds the ring between them, quietly.

“Fuck,” Chris finally swears, grabbing Zach’s shaking hand in his own. “Yeah, Zach, of course. Fuck. Of course, always.”

Grinning, Zach grabs Chris by the face and kisses him. The kind of kiss that you give when you haven’t seen someone in weeks, when you know you were the idiot who almost made the biggest mistake of your life. It’s drowning, and desperate.

“Merry Christmas, babe,” He whispers, kissing Chris again.

~

A few weeks later, Zach does an acoustic version of “Teenage Dream” on TV, and dedicates it to Chris. Right there on late night cable, where absolutely anybody could see it.


End file.
